Britain’s Bradley Smith was ‘positively surprised’ by the KTM RC-16 he will campaign for two years in MotoGP, saying that to be only 2.5s off the pace after only two days’ testing was a good place to be.
The Oxfordshire coppertop was happy with the consistency of the Austrian-built bike and wasn’t shocked at the switch to steel tubular frame and WP suspension after riding with an aluminium twin-spar and Ohlins setup for his whole MotoGP career.
"Very positively surprised by how well everything feels, there are so many things different. One thing that I like is that the bike is super-consistent, doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, does the same things every lap - if there is a wobble, it's a wobble there all the time,” said Smith, speaking at the track.
"Things are logical, when you change things it actually is changing the things and improving the things you actually imagine. It's not like when sometimes you know you get on one bike and you change it and it changes something of a completely other direction.
"I understand clearly what the front tyres are doing, what the rear tyres are doing, so I certainly got some good positives from it, it didn't really take much adapting to it at all. It has a similar character in terms of like it is on the Michelins, the feedback is there, you understand it, reacts to normal changes, it's logical.
"So it means that we can work clearly thoroughly and to be 1.8s off and sit there going 'we can improve that, that and that' it's quite a nice situation."
